Kenny Wright

Many years back, I remember working with a beta reader who accused me of writing “winger” stories rather than hotwife stories. At the time, it was meant to be a disparagement. I wasn’t staying in my lane. I wasn’t hitting the beats that a “true” hotwife author hit. As many long-time readers know, I write these stories for myself first, exploring my own fantasies and turn-ons, so I never took the criticisms to heart and changed my ways.

Now, though, as I put out Bull’s Eye and its significantly more genre-bending/challenging story arc, it occurs to me that maybe the “winger” label is worth exploring a bit more—that maybe I’m not alone in enjoying the hybrid. So I put together a quick article here.

What is winger fiction?

Not a great name (but hey, I didn’t exactly pick it), but essentially it’s the intersection of “hotwife” fiction and “swinger” fiction. The way I’ve been writing it, at its heart, the action is driven by a husband’s desire to watch his wife with other men (aka “hotwife”) but along the way, he’s not a mere bystander in the action.

There may be another couple involved in the scene that he gets to play with. There may be a hot friend. Hell, the book may actually be mostly a group sex/swinger book with serious wife-watching elements. The key, though, is that it’s not your typical wife-sleeps-with-other-men-the-end story.

Some examples?

I’ve got a few of my own, of course. More than a few, actually, and I probably missed some on that list. The quintessential ones are probably books like All In or Cool With Her. At their heart, these are swinger stories, where couples get together and wild things happen. Ben Boswell’s Summer Swing is another good example of these approach (and I highly recommended read). Max Sebastian’s Anarchy of the Heart (coincidentally the book that turned me onto his work) is another example.

But the winger-themes do thread through many of my other books. Ben and I wrote the Parallel Lines books, which are explicitly about the husband and wife taking on different lovers. Book three of Training to Love It hits on aspects of a more open lifestyle, and Max Callahan, from the Forbidden series, was never a full-on hotwife husband.

Why do I like “winger” stories?

My fantasies tend to fall on the “hotwife” end of the hotwife-cuckold spectrum. I’m drawn less to the humiliation and the power games, and more towards the shared experience that can come from a husband watching his wife do naughty things. There’s room in there for more than just the one-sided fun.

Also, I think that when the husband gets in on the action, it’s easier to write a more balanced relationship. I realize that this is the deep fear of a woman when her husband admits to having a hotwife fantasy—”you just want me to sleep with other men so you can sleep with other women”—but I don’t think that winger stories are quite so transactional. The husband still desires, above all else, to watch his wife. But if things get crazy, he can get crazy, too.

So that’s “winger” fiction. Terrible name, but it does have a place. How about you all? Read any good books that would fit this hybrid genre? Let me know in the comments below!